Puncher from Sweden

For the first time since the days of Max Schmeling, the likeliest challenger for the world's heavyweight boxing title is a European. He is Sweden's Ingemar ("Ingo") Johansson, who last September took only one round to knock out the U.S.'s visiting Eddie Machen, up to then rated the No. 1 contender for Floyd Patterson's crown. In the past, Patterson's unpredictable manager Cus D'Amato has not matched his man with any fighter who could possibly be considered dangerous. But last week Johansson flew into Manhattan, held a summit meeting with D'Amato, got an agreement "in principle" for a Patterson-Johansson fight in June. Place: the U.S.-exact site undetermined.

A spreading oak of a lad (204 lbs., 6 ft. 1/2 in.), Johansson has risen far since he began as a street paver in his native Goteborg. At 26 he swoops along the same streets in a white Thunderbird, bosses $250,000 worth of equipment in the earth-moving business that he runs on the side. The son of a manual laborer, Ingo became the pride of Sweden with a simple public weapon: a devastating right.

Ingo begins his fights with the cautious air of a businessman sizing up a major deal; then a purposeful mood of profit taking falls upon him, and he unleashes the right hand. It has brought him twelve knockouts in his 21 pro fights, all of which he won. No windmill mixer, Ingo is so conspicuously unmarked that he often works as a model. A paragon of gentlemanly rectitude outside the ring, he wears natty golf-club blazers, eats with his fork and never forgets his estate. After Patterson's diet of dreary semiamateurs (Pete Rademacher, Roy Harris), Ingo is likely to prove Floyd's first pro foe. Said Ingo: "I am sure that if I punch Patterson with my right, he will stay down."

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